The current linear consumption model of raw material
extraction, production, use, and disposal dominates the global economy. Today, we clearly see that this linear model
has led to serious unintended global consequences from resource depletion to
global waste, spanning all industrial sectors, from plastics to the built
environment.
In contrast to linear models, circular economy
(CE) aims to decouple economic growth from resource consumption by cycling
products and materials back into production, either by returning materials to
generate new products, or by releasing benign substances to the environment
through degradation. CE principles are
based on the efficient use of resources and eliminating waste from product life
cycles; a truly circular economy keeps material in continuous use by design. To
achieve – or even begin to achieve – a circular economy, a convergent research
approach needs to be employed with a multitude of disciplines -- chemistry,
biology, engineering, business, economics, social sciences, and
behavioral sciences all need to work in concert for circularity.By deeply integrating these diverse
disciplines, we can begin to work on tackling the complex challenges that
currently inhibit the growth of the circular economy today. Dr. Bilec will
share her recent work on design for circular from not only the built
environment perspective, but also how we need to design across scales to foster
new and higher-value material pathways.
Bio
Dr.
Melissa Bilec is the William Kepler Whiteford Professor in Civil and
Environmental Engineering and Co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable
Innovation. Dr. Bilec has published 143 peer reviewed articles and secured $12.3
million in funding, including 15 National Science Foundation grants. Her
research focuses on the sustainable built environment. She is committed to exploring how the built
environment can be an integral part of climate change solutions. She views the world and her research using a
systems-level approach, and she is an expert in life cycle assessment. Using this view, she integrates critical
built environment modeling approaches from building energy modeling to indoor
air quality to develop robust strategies to mitigate climate change and
deleterious environmental and human health impacts. Most recently, she is working to solve
the global waste challenge through the advancement and development of circular
economy principles, since the built environment is a major consumer of
resources and producer of waste.
